Tag: Doodling

I only have a couple of drawing apps on my phone because they take up too much memory. This app is quite good, it’s called sketcher. There are a lot of textures you can use, plus pens. I only draw using fingers although I have got a stylus somewhere. The image is not very clear but I used leaf shapes, a chalk pen, a crackle pattern and stars. I’d like to make it more accurate and realistic but it will have to do. I kept to a monochrome so that the texture becomes more important. I guess I could put it through different filters to see how that would affect it.

Meanwhile it’s one am in the morning and there is quite lively talk and shouting going on across the road at the local pub. Once that quietens down I will try and get some sleep.

If you draw something often enough you get to know its shape, whether its a drawing of a car, or a landscape, or a face.

If you want to see things more clearly when you are drawing it can be an idea to turn your picture upside down. then you can identify areas you need to adjust.

This is an extension of the idea. Draw the object upside down then turn it the right way up. It’s a way of learning. I find myself talking through what I am doing. Is the nose too long, are the eyes too close together. Just think how you would draw someone if they were standing in their head? How does the hair on their head fall? Where would the shadows be. In this case I can turn my phone round and clearly see that the face is too long, the eyes are too small and the face is too thin. But it doesn’t look as bad from the normal perspective. I think that’s because of foreshortening. Tablets and phones tend to be held horizontally where pc screens are vertical. With phones that means the top of the image is further away from your eyes than the bottom of it. Consequently the top half may be drawn slightly bigger than it should be so that when viewed upside down you can see the distortions.

When I was a child I learned to draw by copying from cartoons and photos, but also by drawing people from life and from memory, the old adage is right, practice makes perfect. I just need to spend the time to learn and hone my work.

The first three drawings are based on a drawing done in a kaleidoscope app. Then I changed them in picsart using the stretch/spiral tool and then the colour curves tool which allows you to change the hues and tones.

The fourth drawing background was done in ArtRage oils which is a free Google play store app. It was then drawn over with sketcher free which allows you to draw with different brushes. I used the ribbon option to draw a masklike face. The fifth drawing was a quick sketch of a face, drawn in a sketching app. In this case I used picsarts colour curves to change the levels of colour, then a stretching app to change the shapes. Finally I used a tool to create an embossed feel and then the mask option to layer up lighting effects.

I’m using my phone a lot of the time and I tend to forget there are more options on my tablet. Then today I realised that there was a drop down menu on the masks option, so I found a whole new section of the app to play with.

What I guess I’m saying is don’t be afraid to play with drawing apps, you learn more when you do, and you can come up with some really interesting ideas.

I used digital art as a sketchbook. I may not use it in the analogue world of oainting, but it fascinates me.

Someone just asked me about urban sketching so I looked some information up from the urban sketchers page on Facebook. The following text is copied from their page so apologies to them in advance if this is not acceptable. Urban sketchers are a world wide group. This is what they say (edited) :

Dear fellow Urban Sketchers,

This post serves as a reminder that images you post to the Urban Sketchers Facebook group must follow the Urban Sketchers Manifesto.

Your post will be removed if we find your sketches & content not in line with the manifesto.

URBAN SKETCHERS MANIFESTO
———————————————-
• We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation.
• Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel.
• Our drawings are a record of time and place.
• We are truthful to the scenes we witness.
• We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles.
• We support each other and draw together.
• We share our drawings online.
• We show the world, one drawing at a time.

GUIDELINES
—————–
Before sharing your drawings in the group, make sure they meet these basic criteria and they are done in the spirit of the Urban Sketchers Manifesto.

• You did the drawing on location, not from photos, memory, or your imagination.
• You have written the location of the sketch (town and state/country) in the headline or caption.
• We encourage members to write descriptions and stories associated with each sketch.
• We post our OWN work, not that of someone else. Please don’t share other people’s work here.
• Your post must be public, not private. If you post a private picture it will be deleted because the group can’t see it – all we get is an “Attachment unavailable” notice.
• No sketches from figure drawing sessions or posed models.

As long as your art conforms to the above, the medium used is not an issue, be it anything from a pencil to an electronic tablet.

That means draw people doing stuff in context and not just noses, faces, hands and feet. Please avoid people that are posed or without an urban context. Posed people includes self-portraits, too.

Giving an environmental cue to a portrait is very helpful. Drawing the ENTIRE person is even more helpful.

ADDITIONAL NOTES
—————————–
Anyone is welcome to join, but please DO NOT ADD SOMEONE ELSE! These requests will not be approved. This group is huge enough without adding people who don’t necessarily want to be here. It’s a public group so they don’t need to be members to see the art in it.

Below is a quote from it, and note that he includes rural:

“The way I see it and try to convey in The Art of Urban Sketching book, being an urban sketcher isn’t merely about drawing cities, big or small, urban or rural, with a pen or with your fingers on an digital tablet.

“It’s about drawing places that can be put on a map, and everything that happens in those places. It’s about showing the world with drawings, taking people to locations they may never go through artwork you can only create.

“You were there, you saw it, you sketched it, you told us what happened with your hand drawn art, sketched in the moment but perhaps touched up later because you ran out of time or can’t resist the urge to fix something up.”

I came across this last week. It was something I doodled when I was at work and I had it stuck on my computer for a few years…. that tiny little hand/paw trying to hold things together…the mouth stretched wide, with huge jaws…

It says smile, but really it was a grimace, a smile through gritted teeth. I was feeling very low but didn’t want to tell anyone. It was about work, and people, but I used to just get on with things. I wouldn’t let them know they were getting to me. I would just look at this drawing and smile.

I dont know what else to write, I can think of names for red, like carmine and crimson, vermilion and scarlet, close to red are mauve and magenta. I found it difficult to write something that makes much sense I’m afraid. But at least I tried. ..